4 essential skills questions we helped to answer in 2017

When you work in the field of education or labour market, you certainly have many questions about skills. In 2017, Skills Panorama continued to provide you with labour market and skills intelligence to help you finding answers.

What will you be when you grow up (and what skills will you need)?

Ranging from fireman to ballet dancer, astronaut to truck driver, there have been numerous responses to this question, across borders and generations. “I am not sure yet” is often not well-greeted, especially as the respondent ages.

This is a critical question for everyone who wants to succeed in the labour market of today. However, robust data on skills demand by employers is scarce. And across the EU, it simply does not exist.

We have brought you up-to-date with Cedefop’s initiative to develop a system for online vacancy analysis. The system is being designed to automatically collect and analyse vacancies from a selection of online job portals. First results, focusing on skills sought after by employers will be available at the end of 2018. Read more here.

How are skill needs assessed and matched across the EU?

This is another complicated matter that attracts attention due to the skill mismatches that several EU countries face. We have summarised for you what is happening in each Member State.

We have focused in particular on:

the existence of skills anticipation methods;

the governance structure (which authorities are responsible);

the level of stakeholders’ involvement;

the dissemination of labour market intelligence and its use in policy- and decision-making.

Find out more about our succinct yet comprehensive overviews of skills anticipation in all 28 EU Member States here or access the overviews directly.

How to make skills and labour market intelligence policy relevant?

Strengthening links between education and training and the labour market is a long-lasting policy priority.

Acknowledging diversity across EU countries in the approaches for producing skills and labour market intelligence and using it for policy making, Cedefop has developed a skills governance framework that identifies key elements and prerequisites to well-functioning systems.

Read more about the new Cedefop framework for countries to improve their skills governance here or download it directly.

2017 was a busy, yet rewarding, year for us. We are proud that Skills Panorama has been recognised as best practice in the European Public Sector Award.

Next year we have one big ‘SURPRISE’ for you – we are working on a complete redesign of the website to better reach, on top of policy-makers, guidance practitioners. We promise many new features and lots of new data and information.